Elitist Teams

[Chris Vivo]

Originally Posted by CallieJ

This thread reminded me of something really rather disturbing that happened to several members of my team at Championships in 2010.

As you may/may not know, team 1868 is an all-girls team. We're nowhere near being a powerhouse team, but we usually do reasonably well and 2010 was a good year for us. A couple of team members went up to the drive team of an alliance member during queue to talk strategy.

To our astonishment, they point-blank refused to talk to us, saying that all-girls teams suck and that we should play defense while they scored. One person literally spat at my friend in the face when she started to say that actually we were a pretty good midfield team and that that might be a better role for us to play.

The girls in question unfortunately didn't tell any FIRST officials at the time, and I didn't even hear about it until that night at our pick-list meeting. I was astonished that this had happened in FIRST, which has always been an incredibly supportive environment even for people who don't fit the usual expectations of a "robotics nerd".

I know that this isn't the sort of elitist that was directly related to the topic of the thread, but I think it is important that the community know that incidents like this happen even in FIRST.

I have coached/mentored an all female team for ten years in FIRST, and although this sort of thing has happened to us on occasion, it is very rare. Most of the teams that we have encountered base their perceptions of us on our performance, not on the fact that the only males on our team are some of the mentors. I make a point of telling my team that as females, there may be people out there who have doubts about their ability to design and build robots, but the best way to show them they are wrong is to prove it on the field or in the pits by succeeding themselves and helping others succeed. However, on the rare occasions this has happened, I made sure that I or another mentor would hear about it immediately so that we could go have a private chat with a mentor from that team afterward. Doing your best and trying to exhibit GP at all times pays off, and is the best way to answer those that look down on you. And, to get back to the topic of this thread, I have found that when we do this, those "Elite" teams take notice, and we have rarely had a problem being snubbed by the powerhouses.